And so it goes, around and around ...
[Note the italicized portion. As I recall, when the air strikes proved ineffectual, the Soviets sent in ground troops and ended up losing about 30,000 of their best. I've been trying to find a reference to this failed ground campaign; if anyone else can, please post.]
maykuth.com
Andrew Maykuth Online
The Philadelphia Inquirer
August 24, 1998
U.S. struck innocents, survivors say
They contend target was religious base.
Report from Pakistan
PESHAWAR, Pakistan - The residents of the camp in the rugged Afghan mountains had just settled into their tents to sleep Thursday night
when the first American cruise missile hit. It was followed by five or six thunderous strikes that lit up the night.
``All of us were innocent," said Ahmad Sarwar, a physician who helped evacuate the wounded from the camp of mud huts and canvas tents.
``We were not aware an attack was coming. We were just in the open air. . . . Can Americans explain to me who is the terrorist - the
Americans or us?"
Sarwar said that 21 members of the militant Kashmiri group Harkat-ul-Mujaheddin were killed in the attack at one of six camps in
Afghanistan hit by U.S. cruise missiles last week in retaliation for the Aug. 7 bombings of the American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.
U.S. officials say the camps were terrorist bases sponsored by Osama bin Laden, the exiled Saudi businessman they say was behind the
embassy bombings. But Sarwar and others maintained that the camp, near the Afghan town of Khost, was a religious education center and
not a military base.
Three days after the missile strikes, the picture about the attacks in Afghanistan is still murky. The border with Afghanistan remained
closed to foreign journalists yesterday, and no outsiders have been able to assess the damage on the ground.
As the U.S. government hinted that it might retaliate further against sites associated with bin Laden, aid workers and other foreigners
continued to retreat from Afghanistan and its tense frontier with Pakistan.
Sarwar, speaking with reporters at Hayat Abad Medical Center in this provincial capital where several wounded had been taken, said he
survived the attack even though a missile hit only 15 yards from him.
He vowed Islamic militants would exact revenge against the United States for its ``cowardly attack" against a religious site.
``God almighty saved us because we are Muslims, and He helps Muslims, not non-Muslims," said Sarwar, 38, a beefy, bearded man who wore
a knitted white skull cap and taupe shirt with blue ink stains on its breast pocket.
``We were innocent, that's why we were saved, and we will show the Americans when we strike back how God will punish them and destroy
them."
Despite Sarwar's protestations, there were indications the camp and the Harkat-ul-Mujaheddin were not as harmless as portrayed.
Harkat-ul-Mujaheddin is a radical Muslim group that has trained separatists who are fighting to wrest the province of Jammu and Kashmir
from India. Kashmir is the only Muslim-majority province in India.
Pakistan insists it gives only moral and political support rather than any military help to the Kashmiri guerrilla movement, which India
says operates from bases on the Pakistan side of a U.N.-administered ``Line of Control" that divides Kashmir.
The group was formerly known as Harkat-ul-Ansar, which last year was labeled by the U.S. government as one of 30 ``foreign terrorist
organizations." A splinter group of Harkat-ul-Ansar, Al Faran, was blamed for the 1995 disappearance of American Donald Hutchings and
four other tourists who trekked into mountainous Kashmir.
As Sarwar spoke to reporters in a hospital waiting room, there seemed to be some division among his associates about the current purpose
of the camp. Sarwar and leaders of the Harkat insist its aim is only theological.
``If somebody has their doubts, you can go and see yourself that no such training activities took place," he said.
At that point, one of his colleagues interjected in pashtu, the local language: ``Tell them, tell them that we were training Kashmiris and
sending them to Kashmir."
The doctor retorted that ``our leader has already spoken on this issue and we just follow his statement."
Sarwar acknowledged the camp was built as a military base for the Afghan mujaheddin militants who fought in the 1980s to oust Soviet
troops. The mujaheddin were financed by the CIA as part of the agency's Cold War operations.
A Pakistani who visited the camp during the mujaheddin war against the Soviets said the facility was underlain by a network of tunnels
and caves, where the leaders sought protection during Soviet air strikes.
Sarwar said the camp, along with several other nearby installations that were hit in the missile attack, was now run under the supervision
of Jalal ud-din Haqani.
Haqani is an Afghan military commander who was one of the first major mujaheddin commanders to join the Taliban in 1995. The Taliban
is the radical Islamic movement that has controlled most of Afghanistan for the last two years.
Sarwar said that the religious camp was open to any Muslim who wanted to learn the Koran, and that its residents included Pakistanis,
Afghans and others.
Workers at the hospital said that two of the wounded who were brought there did not speak the local languages well and suggested they
were Arabs. One of the wounded, Habib-ur-Rhaman, 22, who was burned and cut in the attack, said he could remember little about the
missile strike, and then cut short questioning.
There appeared to be no division among the group at the hospital about their anger with America over the attack and their resolve to strike
back.
``We don't have jets, we don't have missiles and F-16s and other weapons like that," Sarwar said. ``But our faith is our weapon, and we
wage a jihad, a holy war against the Americans. We are the followers of the Prophet Mohammed and we will wage the jihad against the
Americans." |
